Cantharides

Cantharides

Lytta vesicatoria (Spanish fly) · Animal

Allen

Cantharides is characterized by the combination of burning pain and intolerable urging to urinate as the red thread through all its inflammatory conditions. It produces extreme oversensitiveness of all parts internally and externally. The remedy suits acute and violent inflammatory states of the urinary tract, skin (vesicular eruptions), and sexual organs, and is one of the most important remedies in burns before blistering forms.

Key symptoms

  • Constant urging to urinate with passage of only a few drops mixed with blood
  • Intolerable urging before, during, and after urination
  • Burning, cutting pains in urethra during micturition; violent tenesmus and strangury
  • Oversensitiveness of all parts with raw, sore, burning pain everywhere
  • Violent priapism with excessive pain
  • Bloody nocturnal emissions
  • Vesicular erysipelas; vesicles all over body, sore and suppurating
  • Drinking even small quantities of water increases bladder pain

Worse (aggravation)

  • Drinking even small amounts of water (bladder pain increases)
  • Touch and motion
Henry Clay Allen
Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons · 1898

Spanish Flies (Cantharideae)

Oversensitiveness of all parts. Haemorrhages from nose, mouth, intestines, genital and urinary organs. Pain; raw, sore, burning in every part of the body, internally and externally; with extreme weakness. Disgust for everything; drink, food, tabacco. Drinking even small quantities of water increases pain in the bladder. Constant urging to urinate, passing but a few drops at the time, which is mixed with blood (sudden desire to urinate and intense itching in urethra, Petros.). Intolerable urging, before, during and after urination; violent pains in bladder. Burning, cutting pains in urethra during micturition; violent tenesmus and strangury. Stool: passage of white or pale, red, tough mucus, like scrapings from the intestines, with streaks of blood (Carb. an., Colch.). Bloody, nocturnal emission (Led., Mer., Petr.). Sexual desire: increased both sexes; preventing sleep; violent priapism, with excessive pain (Pic. ac.). Tenacious mucus in the air passages (Bov., Kali bi.); compare Cantharis if …

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Classical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.

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